


and keep your eyes on god

by Quorgi



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Loss of Limbs, a llama named Chico, gratuitous Dark Tower references, implied mcmercy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-30 05:40:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11457132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quorgi/pseuds/Quorgi
Summary: you been reading too much, haven't you gunslinger?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is my first published work for the fandom. it's unbeta'd and short but it deals with a lot of my personal headcanons for how mccree lost his arm. Thanks for reading!

you wake up at four in the morning, because you always have.

at this point, it matters little though, you wake up at four in the morning because you always have for a life that you’d left behind so long ago. you stretch. you run. you eat what you can find and the world moves on for you at six in the morning. you are ready to leave at six in the morning because you’ve always been like this, dictated by schedule that had been driven into you with an awful voice and a silent need for something else –

and they’d let you work around it. overwatch had at least. scheduling went odd when you collapsed at two in the afternoon and slept for three hours but your routine would start again – stretch, run, eat, ready for nighttime drills and homework. homework because he'd been so concerned that you couldn't read the mission brief when he'd dragged you into that diner and laid out your options while you overlooked the gorge that nearly sent you to your death. and he'd been one of many that had shown concern for you. you can't count the amount of people who had cared in the ten, twelve years you'd been there. they were everywhere. and they had been so far fewer in number when you crawled out of your bunk at four in the morning and kissed her head and left. it's entirely unfair. Genji had left before you did. you're breaking her heart once again. 

you don’t have anyone out here now. you have yourself and your six shooters. you have fifty seven bullets in a gun belt, six in each cylinder, more in the duffel bag if need be. you have a water jug and purifier. everything you own is in the same shade of drab so washing it doesn’t stain or looks bad, ( your clothes are you calling card, you represent your team in this uniform and you will look your best, Jesse. You have to ). you walk into disputed territory at three thirty, climb into a tree and cat nap.

you repeat this often, and you repeat your inventory hourly because you can’t stand to think of much else. there’s too much to think about, too much to unpack from what you’ve been getting from your former commander for six months, and what you’ve been getting from Angela when your trysts finally come around. you haven’t seen her in a month, and knowing that your flight leaves in a few days for Florence keeps your feet moving in the dark. she will have news. she can be trusted.

you stop thinking about it, because you need to keep yourself slow, you need not not get comfortable in a certain way of thinking or you’ll wear yourself out. you’re burnt out, and you know you are but there are still many trails ahead and people left to do right by. they’re trusting you out here. _rest easy kid_  the voice inside your head chirps, mellow and knowing as he’s always been,  _you’ve only got a little further to go_. you fall asleep at twelve thirty, hidden from prying eyes. you waste a bullet on dinner that you can't trap with a snare. the jackrabbit is old. mangled. it stares at you with dead, knowing eyes. 

you lop off the head and throw it into the bush by the firelight, knowing that there will be nothing to stop whatever luck you've just brought upon yourself. you try not t think about it, but it echoes in your head. 

_i foresee serious problems ahead_

    you read that in a book once, and it comes back to haunt your thoughts. the dread that balls in the pit of your stomach, the heart pounding, awful realization that takes you over makes you vomit.

 

 

* * *

 

 

you can’t remember the name of the town, your brain clicks and clicks into a tune you recognize and call the place _agua fria_ , despite the fact there is no rivers to be seen, and the ocean is miles out.  _rode a stranger one fine day_. and the way they look at you makes your skin crawl, and the way they whisper unlatches your thoughts from its stake, you are a racehorse finally been given his head, you are rocketing. there’s cover behind those rocks, behind that well, behind that wall, you can scale that roof in ten seconds and you have fifty six bullets in your belt. you have fifty six bullets and six in each gun and forty seven in your duffel back (and you know because you counted last night) and you have one hundred and fifteen bullets and you hope you don’t use them all. you hope you don’t have to but this is the nature of the beast. god help you, god help them all. this isn’t Tull. this isn’t a book, and you aren't the hero. you will not kill them all with the bullets in your belt.

there are few who will try.

you see them out of the corner of your eyes and it’s watching a bear try and hide behind a sapling, hoping you won’t see them. you see the glint of a gun. you fire. it is instinct. these hands only know how to kill this is what they were forged to do in the heat of battle and you know that you’ve made a mistake. it was a gun, yes. but the live wires in the back of your neck are firing off, they’re jumping and sparking and maybe Genji was right to leave. your thoughts converge and what little you speak of the regional dialect reaches your ears.  _this is what you get for not doing your homework, this is what you get for staying too off the beaten path_ that voice chirps in your head as you skin your bad knee looking for cover from the hail of gunfire. there are two on your left, there is one that you’ve shot dead and you think you saw three more. you think. you can’t be sure and you hazard a glance.

no, there’s only four of them, and they’re closing in fast and in hindsight, you should have known this wasn’t a real town, you should have known but you were tired and hungry. even now, you’re still tired and hungry but the blood with sate that need, but you’ve done this so many times can you even call yourself appalled at the lives you end? no. not anymore. one snakes around the building and you shoot him dead with a well handled precision.

three are left, and they want you dead. and you want them dead to give you safe passage but you can’t stray. but you have. but you can’t. and you did, you’re diving for secondary cover and a bullet whizzes by your ear taunting you in the whistle of the wind ‘remember what a lucky bastard you are’. you are down two bullets and a few years on your life with how fast your heart is thumping, galloping out of your chest like your brain is. your ears are ringing.

and there’s a click, and you realize you’d been right the whole time. there are still four men left after you shot two dead, he’s behind you. a curse leaves your mouth and you grab the barrel of the gun to drop it from your face and he fires.

you don’t feel it.

your are pulling iron and you cannot squeeze the trigger, and your killing hands take over and shoot this one in the chest several times with his own pistol until the gun clicks. you right hand aches, your left feels like it’s been set on fire. your gloves are red. you’re missing two fingers, and you can see the mangled bits of them on the ground.

_i foresee serious problems ahead._

you have to stop, you have to fight and you tuck your mangled hand under your armpit and use your right to fire. your other revolver sits bloody in its holster, and the iron is hot on your hip from action, but you are not letting up. and you are wondering how you will make it in this world with one pistol and two fingers on your dominant hand gone, unable to to be saved, and you think this as you gun down the last of them. three in all, five total. you shoot one through his head, and other through his neck, and the last, you waste eight bullets on because you have lost your way. and you scream and rage with every bullet that mangles his corpse until you are standing, bloody and triumphant against these people that would have you dead.

and you feel nothing.

your shirt is bloody and your guns are bloody and you will have to clean them. yeah, you’re going to have to clean them alright, and you shuffle away until you reach your dropped rucksack, your duffel bag, your water skin. and you sit there in the middle of a field, doing all you know how to do, as quickly and clinically as possible. you have a flight in two days. Angela will know. Angela might have news about Genji. and you let that keep you going.

you clean the wound. you drench it in the water you have left and wash the blood from the stumps and grim fate twists your gut. in a fight, your hands had been equals, they were equal in their ability to kill and maim, in their ability to shoot, but in everything else your left had led. you wonder about infection, whether there is something in the water or in the air that will lend to it, and if it means more than just missing fingers, your trigger fingers. how will you make it in this world without your dominant hand and in your dazed musings you hum  _i’ve always jacked off with my right anyhow, it’s not a complete loss._

the pain surges. you double up and grit your teeth in an awful noise. you take your bandana and wrap the hand as best you can, watching the blood soak through to the other side and watching the fabric turn a darker red, knowing that you cannot keep this hidden for two days, knowing that you cannot go to Florence as you are. you need a doctor.

you will clean your guns later, for now, you walk through these bloody streets, your bags strapped over your chest, your head dizzy and numb.

you take stock. you inventory.

you try not to think about it.


	2. Chapter 2

you wake up at nine in the morning.

you’re five hours past due but your body feels like a weight, heavy and swaying as you sit up, heavy and sick. your phantom fingers are still screaming ‘ _i’m here! i’m here!_ ’ and you have to remind yourself that you’ve been crippled irreparably. no, they're not. 

you hazard a look. thin pink lines sourced from the stumps are crawling up your hand, and your worst fears have been realized. it’s an infection, alright, and you’re sweating from the heat that’s raging behind your eyes and under your skin. that was a dumb move, that was the worst move, you knew better than that and here you are paying for it, you’re an idiot, a goddamn idiot and if you’d pulled that shit for real, Reyes would have your other two fingers as well. dumb enough to never pull the trigger again, you hear me? yeah i hear you. you squeeze whatever sickness you can out of the rough ends of bone and muscle, and it makes you sing with the pain. you double over, and wait for the pain to lapse into numbness again. count it down, one hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight...

it’s almost noon when you finish tending to the stumps and washing your ruined bandana, and your twelve miles to the next town looks a lot like a thousand. you start to walk.

you stop at three for your nap that you didn’t quite want but your body is screaming to rest. you work on that, and don’t wake until eight. you sit up again and your world’s gone dizzy, and you check your hand. infection to the wrist. and you will die if it reaches your heart. and you don’t know the fear of it because you will die out here anyways, alone, and no one will know. you have made that peace.

you will die without your team. and that’s okay.

at eight thirty after a small meal of jerky and water, you set about to the task of cleaning your guns because you need the routine and your heart is beating out of your chest as a thousand miles an hour. you need to ground yourself, so you ground your ass into a mossy stone and pull your guns. the blood is dry but you have time. the task is difficult. hands that have done it out of habit, these killing hands that knew how to clean your weapons with ease and precision, fumble and struggle with routine. you hit your wounds on the iron and curse and cry when you can’t anymore, but the guns get clean all the same. you fall asleep at eleven after putting them back together.

you miss your flight. you try not to think about it.

you hobble into town at ten and you pawn your left gun and it’s supple oiled holster for money to eat, but you know full well with how the infection crawled up your arm last night that it’s not going towards that. and you crawl to the clinic. you wobble and sway into the clinic and nearly die on their floor. it was an accident, you tell them. you were working on a construction project for your grandmother and the fingers were lost and the car wouldn’t start so you walked.

you can see the grim realization on the nurse’s face as they strive to make you comfortable, knowing you could die. the ceiling has water spots on it. there’s a spider in the corner. broken understanding and the words for amputation.

they do what they can and you fall asleep. the clock looks like it says one o'clock.

* * *

 

 

your mouth is sour. it tastes old and dry and you lick your lips. you stare blankly at a waterlogged ceiling tile, you know – the cheap foamy kind they put in office buildings. not that you’ve seen many office buildings, but there’s ductwork behind there and it’s all the hallmarks of a cheap structure, meant to be rented.

do you remember the dreams? no. you know you had them though, the fluttering of eyes, and vague, upsetting whispers when fever wracked your body. its still fever, right? you feel cold, sweaty under this thin sheet they call a blanket. no one’s checking on you. your ekg is marching along in a steady rhythm. your hand is freezing. and when you prop yourself up your body continues to lie prone, and you can’t figure out why–

you look over. in your fever your hand is still there, you can feel it, you can sense it moving and how your wrist turns and how it flicks with the sensation that sits at your elbow. it’s just a phantom.

your arm is gone, and there’s nothing left of the joint.

_i see serious problems ahead._  you mouth doesn’t move with your thoughts, and you push yourself up on your non-dominant hand, the needles under your skin shifting. your ekg shifts faster, and you’ve seen this all before. you know you have, you did it this morning. and yesterday. and the day before. and there’s always a nurse that comes in and says please stay down in her broken english and you fight it and you cry. today she does not come. today, you’re here with a broken body and weak knees and you’re hungry but the thought of food makes your stomach flip.

the clock on the wall says its three thirty in the afternoon. it’s dark outside, so it must be broken. or it’s three thirty in the morning. you’re not sure, at this point, and you’ve become so turned around in this clinical white and blue and the smell of alcohol that you lay back down and fall asleep.

the day you leave, you thank the drugged and delusional you for not saying more than he had to, and your discharge is quick and secretive. under a false name its easy enough for a one-armed man to slip out of the clinic after paying a fair share from his gun pawn, but you know better. another notch in someone’s bedpost, really. you’re going to need that cash from your useless gun to get better, no one wants to hire a one-armed gunslinger, no one wanted a man who can’t pull the trigger with both hands. it’s harder to navigate around, and there’s always some fear you’ll be spotted, or discovered.

you’ve been out for almost a month, and you’ve yet to grieve over the news that’s been plastered everywhere. the zurich explosion. your commander is dead, and yet his voice remains as clear as day in your head.  your strike commander is dead too. everyone you’d fallen under for leadership is dead, your doctor was detained in Florence, your best friend is nowhere to be found.

you will lay low. someone will come to get you. someone will contact you and your life can proceed, with one less hand to get by with. for now you need help still. you call the hotels you frequented with her, ask for her, leave messages. you try. she never returns them.

you keep your mind occupied because you cannot cry yet for the loss of the men and women  who shaped you. you cannot cry yet. your mission is not done.


	3. epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> reach for the sky

the operation was mostly successful. a pretty five hundred gets you the skeleton and the pistons to make your spidery fingers work their magic, and extra two hundred for the plating is being worked off in a debt to the cyberneticist’s brother. it’s very Skywalker. you smile.

you can’t pull a trigger anymore, and the hardware is embarrassing, but it makes life bearable. they give you a poncho for the colder nights because your auxiliary pack won’t fit in a jacket, and its a shade of dark green that’s very reminiscent of that string of films you like so much – they get them on satellite every so often, and you’ve got enough training to rig the stations to something more watchable than news out of Chile and Peru.  Madrigal is watching from the house, carved into the volcanic mountainside. he matches the landscape and might as well be made of the stone itself. he's an elderly man at the very edges of his life, and his face is so deeply wrinkled you wonder how he manages, silently wondering if your strong jaw and straight nose will one day do the same. it's a possibility. you never knew your father after all, and you assumed he was from the region.

and you stand with your flock. you guard the sheep and the elderly llamas that hate your arm and the alpacas that refuse to get near you. but they have a dog. they have a donkey, too small for work, but you make your way here. it’s modest. it’s easy. it’s going to take another four months to work off the debt while you use this as physical therapy and a way to gain your strength back.

you’re still sick, the infection had been that bad, they’d told you, and that gaining back what you’ve lost is going to be a process, but you’ll be stronger for it. your soul isn’t going anywhere, vaquero, you are a fighter. you’ll be damned if you give up now.

and you haven’t. but it’s taking you a long while to figure yourself out.

“ are you done for the day then? ” Madrigal calls out.

“ looks like it. Chico’s got a handle on things ” you reply. your Spanish is getting better at least. he might have been proud, languages were never your strong suit. the elderly man smiles and motions you inside. “ come inside, your shows are on ” is all you need to abandon your shepherding spot on this lonely side of the mountain.

the topic changes at dinner from the guardian llamas to something else. you stop chewing on your lamb shank when Madrigal finally asks. there's a gunfight on the television.

“ what are you running from, and why do you fear leaving? ”

“ what i’ve done ” is an easy answer. it’s not one that satisfies your employer. “ i’m not a nice man. i’ve done terrible things, and i’ll never outlive them. i’m a villain in the global story now ”

“ well you don’t seem like one. maybe replace your hand with a hook and i might be able to see it, but you’ve done nothing here that warrants that ”

“ i’ve killed a lot of people ”

“ and you regret it ”

“ most of them, yeah ”

“ do you have a plan? ”

you stop for another moment, fearing silently your corn masa is going to go cold. but the food is tasteless in your mouth.

“ …. i’m still thinkin’ on that ”

“ take as long as you need, Jesse. you’re a smart man, you’ll figure something out ”

you don’t figure it out for another long while, but you have seven more of these conversations, once a month until Madrigal dies. it was a heart attack. you keep his flock. you keep the red poncho he gives you. it’s alpaca, and serves you well enough up into Mexico and past a deadly little stretch of territory where you meet Lydia Horne, and you save this former Deadlock matron from herself. you think of him often though. you can't help it, and you wonder if his son has taken over the small farm. or if he sold it. you think about the dog and the donkey and Chico and the alpacas who treated you no better than a wolf wearing clothes. you miss them regardless. 

Lydia now owns your house. she keeps your horse too. you filter back every so often knowing that there is something out there in that bright blue sky that’s yours, and you’re struggling to grasp it. somewhere out in the Nevada desert, twenty miles outside Carson City is a ranch you've owned since you were seventeen, since you shot Mercado through the eye and orphaned his chickens and his dog ( and how you miss that dog too ) and his horse. so Lydia keeps it with her son, and her grandson. you'll pay the bills somehow. 

she shows you the ticket website on a holovid tablet that she "loans" you. figures that you might have more justice to dispense along the way to finding yourself. atoning for what you've done, maybe. the money can't hurt neither.

you open an offshore account under Madrigal’s name. by noon the next day, you rake in a fifty thousand dollar bounty on an old son of the forging fires, deep in Deadlock territory. at noon the _next_ next day, the money drops into your account.


End file.
